Large numbers of icebergs last floated close to New Zealand in 2006, when some were visible from the coastline – the first such sighting since 1931.
An iceberg up to 200 metres long had reached 160 miles south-east of New Zealand’s Stewart Island on Tuesday, Australian glaciologist Neal Young said.
He could not say how many icebergs were at large in the south Pacific, but said he had counted 130 in one satellite image alone and 100 in another.
New Zealand oceanographer Mike Williams said the icebergs were drifting at a speed of about 16 miles a day, and he expected most would not reach New Zealand. He said he was “pretty sure these icebergs came from the break-up of the Ross sea ice shelf in 2000” – an ice shelf the size of France and the origin of the 2006 flotilla of icebergs.
Temperatures have risen in the Antarctic Peninsula area near South America by as much as 3C in the last 60 years, and “whole ice shelves have broken up,” Young said. But he said the iceberg flotilla south of New Zealand came from the Ross Sea, a completely different area of Antarctica, and the event was unrelated to climate change(DEBATABLE